Saturday, July 4, 2015

The Weekly Diary: 29th June - 3rd July

Monday 29th June

It may have been noted that the
crisis in Greece has not been covered on these pages, largely as it is
difficult to make light of the crumbling of an entire nation into a pit of
misery and despair. However, now we can no longer ignore it. The deadlines are
being reached, there is no resolution to the crisis, the banks are shut, and
there is no money left. The Grexit seems increasingly inevitable. This story
must be talked about.

Although, today is the first day
of Wimbledon. So, we’ll probably talk about that instead.

Tuesday 30th June

Exciting news from the world of
opera.

No, really.

Well, sort of.

At last night’s first night of Guillaume Tell by Rossini at Covent
Garden, there was booing mid-performance from outraged Frasiers and Nileses at
an unexpected rape scene, which involved nudity and violence.

Well, of course it did. It was a
rape scene.

The audience wasn’t having it.
One critic on Newsnight said “I was
repelled by the rape scene.” Well, of course you were. It was a rape scene. If
you hadn’t been repelled, I would have been worried.

The director has admitted that it
was probably a mistake not to warn audience members, some of whom were
children, that there would be nudity and violent rape in the production. D’ya
think?

That aside though, a fair bit of
the coverage seems to represent people who were upset because they didn’t want
to be confronted with rape at all, and certainly not at Covent Garden, at the
height of the season. It’s enough to put you off your Veuve Clicquot between
acts.

Wednesday 1st July

The hottest July day on record
and the tabloids have no idea about what headlines to go with. The Guardian ran a heatwave live blog
which, very fittingly, suffered meltdown when the servers overheated.

One of the reasons for the heat
was not in fact the sun but the searing rage of Boris, who is furious that the Airports
Commission has recommended the construction of a third runway at Heathrow.
Boris has sworn he will lie down in front of the bulldozers if the decision is
taken to build it, making Cameron’s choice on the matter extremely easy.

Thursday 2nd July

England’s Women Football Team
have recently done very well at a World Cup. So well, in fact, that we were
beginning to doubt if they were English. Well, we were heartily reassured of
their nationality when they lost unluckily in the semi-finals to Japan.

A freak own goal from Laura
Bassett saw the end of the Lionesses, as she managed to loop the ball in-off
the post as she performed a sliding block several yards from and to the side of
the goal.

It was devastating stuff, and
goes along with the men’s many agonising disappointments, but none of them
quite had this level of bizarre misfortune. See, even when it comes to crashing
out because of a slice of luck, our girls trump our boys.

Friday 3rd July

It is time to enjoy the heady
aroma of Trump Corner, as we check in on the most ridiculous Presidential
Campaign since Rick “Ooops” Perry decided to have another crack at it. Trump is
under significant pressure to apologise for comments he made concerning
Mexicans, where he described them as “drug dealers and rapists”.

This is a particular problem, as
the Latino community are essential to any Republican attempt to regain the
White House, as former Governor of Florida and current candidate Jeb Bush realised
when he simply described Trump as “wrong”.

On the other hand, the Irish-Italian-Canadian-Cuban
candidate Ted Cruz said “I like Donald Trump. I think he’s terrific. I think
he’s brash. I think he speaks the truth.” Bold words. Bold, needless words from
a Latino man who has just said that the person who described Mexicans as drug
dealers and racists “speaks the truth”.

In short, on this evidence of political nous, we
can expect it to be another Bush on the ball come November 2016.